ABSTRACT
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China is a complex policy network. The evolution of the network, whose relationships are defined by Chinese concepts of social connections known as guanxi, followed the predicted route to synchronization of scalefree networks. The network also exhibits complex characteristics of small worlds, emergent order, emergent functionality, and resilience. 8.1 IntroductionThe Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) represents an influential political body in the world’s most
populous country and the second largest economy. The CC ratifies fiscal policies and approves economic reforms, commits to military actions and modernization programs, and adopts security and foreign policies. Network analysis offers a way of revealing and illuminating the character and nature of the relationships between the CC members.This study uses the Chinese conception of social relation-ships-guanxi, pronounced “gwahn-shee”—to determine which CC members have ties to other members. Later in this chapter, I will define the fundamental guanxi relationships and explain how the data is used. Network analysis software is used to analyze the basic data set for the Central Committee for each year from 1922 to 2011 to reveal network structures and patterns.
